On dual quaternions, dual split quaternions and Cartan-Schouten metrics on perfect Lie groups

We discuss Cartan-Schouten metrics (Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian metrics that are parallel with respect to the Cartan-Schouten canonical connection) on perfect Lie groups and in particular, on cotangent bundles of simple Lie groups. Applications are foreseen in Information Geometry. Throughout this work, the tangent bundle TG and the cotangent bundle T*G of a Lie group G, will always be endowed with their Lie group structures induced by the right trivialization. We show that TG and T*G are isomorphic if G itself possesses a biinvariant Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian metric. We also show that, if on a perfect Lie group, there exists a Cartan-Schouten metric, then it must be biinvariant. We compute all such metrics on the cotangent bundles of simple Lie groups. We further show the following. Endowed with their canonical Lie group structures, the set of unit dual quaternions is isomorphic to T*SU(2), the set of unit dual split quaternions is isomorphic to the cotangent bundle of the group of unit split quaternions. The group SE(3) of special rigid displacements of the Euclidean 3-space is isomorphic to T*SO(3). The group SE(2,1) of special rigid displacements of the Minkowski 3-space is isomorphic to T*SO(2,1). So some results on SE(3) by N. Miolane and X. Pennec, and M. Zefran, V. Kumar and C. Croke, are generalized to SE(2,1) and to T*G, for any simple Lie group G.